3A
Wednesday, April 17, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Night escort service is a priority for a safer campus
Safety on campus is an important issue to most students.During the Student Senate elections, neither of the coalitions had the issue of safety on their platforms, although some of the candidates said that they considered safety an important issue to them.
An area of concern to many students is the safety of students in the evening and at night.
There are less students on campus, and many students are afraid to walk on campus alone. Nevertheless, these students have many important things to do on campus relating to their class work.
Night safety is a concern
Many students are not willing to go to the library or to an event if they know that it will be dark by the time they have to head home.
The parking lots are especially dark, and there is some fear for students who stay late and have to walk to their vehicles.
Also, the parking lots on Daisy Hill and around Gertrude Sellards Pearson-Corbin Hall are not well lit.
There is a concern for students who park at a distance and then have to walk to their residence hall.
Some kind of system needs to be set up that provides a safe way for students to walk on campus in the evening.
More lighting would help, but the University's Master Lighting Plan still is a few years from completion. An escort service providing students with a safe means of walking easily could be established.
Kansas State University has a program that escorts students from campus buildings to residence halls. This is a good program that works. Students call the dispatcher who then sends the escort to the student.
THE ISSUE:
Safety on campus
The University of Missouri has a strong program called Students Walking Students that was started by its student government,
The University of Kansas needs to adopt a volunteer program similar to other schools that would provide students walking on campus with an escort.
Missouri Students Association.
Each team consists of one woman and one man with a walkie-talkie. This program is open to students, faculty and staff.
When a call goes to the dispatcher, a team is sent and the person is then escorted to another building, residence hall or fraternity or sorority.
This program runs from Sunday to Thursday nights from early evening to 1 a.m.
The walkers all are volunteers who go through an extensive screening process before they can work for Students Walking Students.
First, a background check is done by the university's police. If a person passes the background check, then there is a stringent interview phase.
Those who are successful then are trained extensively. The program involves 30-40 people working in two-to four-hour shifts.
Something must be done
KU Saferide is a program that allows students to call and get a ride to their home. But it will not take students from a campus building to a parking lot, nor from one campus building to another.
An escort program such as Students Walking Students easily could be set up on campus. As a volunteer program, only setup costs would necessary.
But no matter what the cost, a program such as this is well worth it if it increases safety on campus and makes people feel more secure.
SARBPAL HUNDAL FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Jeff MacNelly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Networks do not focus on the issues when covering politics
Rupert Murdoch has the right idea.
Earlier this year the Australianborn international media baron offered Americans a taste of what the British have enjoyed for decades: Free air time right before the November elections for the top presidential candidates.
It would be an antidote, he said, to big money interests and "horse race coverage" that is insensitive to "what this election may mean to the lives of people."
In a study of 315 elections stories broadcast on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts, the Center for Media and Public Affairs has found the amount of horse race news — news on which candidate is leading the pack — tripled from 1992 levels.
He is right about the coverage. One recently released study by a Washington-based media watchdog group indicates that, despite promises by various media moguls to expand the emphasis on issues, "horse race" coverage by the three major television networks actually has become three times more dominant than it was four years ago.
Fully half of coverage studied dealt with the candidates' political prospects instead of their programs, the center said, as "reporters tended to discuss policy issues in terms of their impact on the race rather than their implications for the public."
Worse, the length of the average candidate's "sound bite" (television lingo for a quote captured on tape) shrunk to an average of seven seconds, which the center described as an all-time low, compared to 1968 when the sound bites of candidates averaged 42 seconds, unbelievably long-winded by today's standards.
Filling the dead air left by the incredible shrinking sound bite was
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
more sound from network reporters. The none GOP candidates together received less than one-fifth as much air time as the journalists who covered them — 79 minutes vs. 453 minutes for the reporters.
The media center conducted the study for the nonpartisan Markle Foundation in the
hope, spokesmen said, of motivation greater substance in campaign content and coverage.
This early report card was conducted from New Year's Day until Feb. 19, the date of the New Hampshire primary and less than a week before Murdoch made his announcement. Murdoch hardly could have picked a more vulnerable target than the big networks.
Since then, my unscientific survey found little changed. Coverage throughout the primary season continued to be dominated by more horse-race stories. Even the Sunday morning news panel programs, where there is more time to talk about issues, drifted instead into talk about odds: Will Steve Forbes drop out? Will Pat Buchanan beat Bob Dole? Will party elders jettison the weakened Dole in favor of Lamar Alexander?
In an address to the national Press Club, Murdoch offered an hour of prime time on his Fox TV network on election eve night for "final presentations by the leading candidates for president," free of editing, censorship or "interviews by some all-
knowing correspondent." He also offered to run one-minute position statements on 10 key issues from each of the candidates during prime time and called on his competitors to join him in offering additional free time in simultaneous broadcasts.
So far, the other networks have maintained that they already provide plenty of time to the candidates. In fairness, if they are comparing themselves to Fox, they have a point.
Although Fox has produced some very good local news operations, it has yet to put together a network evening news program of its own. In the meantime, we shall see how many Fox affiliates are willing to preempt The Simpsons, Metrose Place, or A Current Affair to bring us, say, the party conventions this summer or the candidate debates in the fall.
Ironically, Murdoch's success partly is responsible for the incredible shrinking sound bite. The success of his network and other new choices on cable and free television have been taking big chunks of audience away from the three big networks since 1980. Tougher competition to grab and hold audience attention has speeded up the pace of broadcast news and often pushed politicians aside in favor of professional pundits and personalities who enliven the news with entertaining arguments.
Journalists often like horse-race analysis because it is fun and less controversial than analysis of issues. Rather than risk being charged with bias on the sensitive values issues of the day, it is easier to cling to polls and the "conventional wisdom" about who's ahead and who's not.
Clarence Page is a columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Spaces are available for Watkins patients
This letter is written in response to your editorial titled, "Watkins patients should have access to nearby parking lots," which appeared in the University Daily Kansan on Friday. The article was correct in stating that there are 11 one-hour parking meters and three reserved for handicapped parking on the south side of the Watkins Memorial Health Center.
outside of Lot #90. Of those 26, 24 meters are stamped on the pole as "Health Center Only."
What the article failed to mention was that there is an additional 26 one-hour meters directly across the street on the
These are also one-hour meters. The problem is that you can see students park in those one-hour meters and proceed to walk up the hill to class, taking the meters that are designated for the center's patients.
The proposal recommended by your editorial staff would not work at Watkins. We got rid of a system similar to that about 15 years ago. We have direct patient check-in to many clinics and departments at the health Center and there is no one area that could be designed to take
care of parking
The problem 15 years ago became so bad that we had as many as two full-time staff doing nothing but working on parking tickets.
We do not have the funding or the staff to handle the situation. I would recommend that the editorial staff write an article urging students to park in the proper areas such as in the parking garage and lot 90 and not park in areas marked for "Health Center only."
James E. Strobl Director, Student Health Services
Check one: You are either 1.) a conservative or 2.) a liberal.
Students usually find themselves polarized after college exposure
The climate of our nation continually perpetuates the idea of "either
If you haven't yet decided, be sure to polarize yourself before graduation; without stepping whole-heartedly and full-bodied into one camp, you will remain entirely alienated from all societal discussion.
STAFF COLUMNIST
We define ourselves by exploring the two sides and then affiliating ourselves fully with the belief system that feels best to us. Many aspects shape these decisions: familial history and loyalty, contemporary trends and media expressions, critical learning and personal inner exploration. Interestingly, given the variety of factors influencing each of us, there appears on the battlefield only two legions, each one tossing verbal ammunition toward the other.
A contemplative nature is divorced from many of us. Regurgitating another person's opinion — a person granted authority in some obscure and questionable way — is much easier than facing and expressing inner observations.
Of course, there is one good reason to behave in this manner and to lovingly devote oneself to being one or the other: a collective voice that will gain media attention and will be heard. Adhere to your own individualistic thoughts and in essence endure taxation without representation.
It seems that the majority of people in each camp buy into the group, obtain membership and then ride the thoughts of others. These thoughts rarely are considered personal, but often become empty verbal vomit in social settings — generally when a member of the other enemy camp is present.
Such unconstructive cloaking within merely two costumes of belief has developed a dependence on polarization. This society cannot witness an evolutionary discussion because such polarization is detrimental to progressive thought. Rather than build upon the overly reiterated political stances of today, the majority of people rely on statements that have stagnated to the point of rhetoric. As Cornel West, in his daring book Race Matters, correctly has observed, "Rhetoric becomes a substitute for analysis."
As political analysts and opinion page columnists continually lament low voter turnout in most political elections, they fail to observe that given the constructed stances, there is little to motivate one to vote. Any voice which swains from the political mainstream is left afloat in the national culture. Alienation leads to apathy, and an apathetic society has little else to look forward to than demise.
We need to recognize that between the far right and the far left is a continuum of belief which has a right to be heard. As long as people refuse to vote according to their own opinions, polarized government will flourish. The population must understand that every taxable person should demand their rights.
In the coming election, do not adopt the "I'm voting for the lesser of two evils" mentality. Rather, critically analyze the issues and the candidates involved; if no one represents your views or deserves your vote, tell them so on the ballot. Do not stay home and do nothing.
Leslie Bowyer is a Lawrence senior in art history.
OUT FROM THE CRACKS